NETGEAR is aware of a growing number of phone and online scams. To learn how to stay safe click here.
Forum Discussion
WNCE2001 inappropriately providing DHCP connections
I have a new WNCE2001 Wireless Ethernet bridge and have successfully configured it to connect my ethernet-only printer to my home network. This morning, I was unable to get to the internet from my iP...
Yes, I have the problem that everyone else here has talked about. Mercifully, when my REAL DHCP server is active everyone gets an IP address from it and everyone is happy, but if I happen to turn off the computer running the DHCP server then everyone starts coming up with the bogus IP addresses in the 192.168.1.0 subnet with the bogus gateway at 192.168.1.251. I just gave everyone static IP addresses which is a workaround that I haven't seen mentioned here. It's not a particularly good workaround because if anyone picks up their computer and leaves they will not be able to connect to any hot-spots on the road because of their static IP. But it is a workaround that mostly works for me.
Here is my theory of what is happening, and why it is so problematical (hard for NetGear to fix):
The essential quality of the WNCE2001 that makes this such a knotty problem is the design spec that you can connect this with an ethernet cable to the Ethernet port of a computer and the computer will automatically configure itself to the subnet of the WNCE2001. That makes configuration doable for non-techies. Connect it to your computer and bingo, you see the configuration page (I'm not even sure you need to browse to the www.mywifiext.net since the WNCE2001 configures itself as the gateway.) However, this means that whenever the WNCE2001 senses the Ethernet cable being unplugged, it has to assume that what it is plugged into next will be a computer wanting to configure it and it has to turn on the internal (rogue) DHCP server. Ideally, this DHCP server would only serve to the wired connection, however, I suspect that due to the way this tries to act as a pass-through device it has trouble distinguishing between wired packets and unwired packets and it ends up responding to DHCP requests from the unwired side.
My theory doesn't explain why this problem doesn't seem to disconnect the device wired to the WNCE2001. The assumption would be that when you turn off your TV the WNCE2001 would then switch to the DHCP mode and give it an address in the 192.168.1.0 subnet. This does not seem to happen as far as I can tell.
Although I have some inclination to take this as evidence that NetGear has finally gone over to the dark side, I'm trying to see how this could be amenable to some other interpretation. It seems that they may not have designed this product. They got it from another manufacturer to fill a gap in their product line-up. This caused them to be too quick to the market place and after the product was out they uncovered this fatal flaw that firmware can't fix.
Does anyone have any indications as to whether the WNCE3001 has this problem?
Here is my theory of what is happening, and why it is so problematical (hard for NetGear to fix):
The essential quality of the WNCE2001 that makes this such a knotty problem is the design spec that you can connect this with an ethernet cable to the Ethernet port of a computer and the computer will automatically configure itself to the subnet of the WNCE2001. That makes configuration doable for non-techies. Connect it to your computer and bingo, you see the configuration page (I'm not even sure you need to browse to the www.mywifiext.net since the WNCE2001 configures itself as the gateway.) However, this means that whenever the WNCE2001 senses the Ethernet cable being unplugged, it has to assume that what it is plugged into next will be a computer wanting to configure it and it has to turn on the internal (rogue) DHCP server. Ideally, this DHCP server would only serve to the wired connection, however, I suspect that due to the way this tries to act as a pass-through device it has trouble distinguishing between wired packets and unwired packets and it ends up responding to DHCP requests from the unwired side.
My theory doesn't explain why this problem doesn't seem to disconnect the device wired to the WNCE2001. The assumption would be that when you turn off your TV the WNCE2001 would then switch to the DHCP mode and give it an address in the 192.168.1.0 subnet. This does not seem to happen as far as I can tell.
Although I have some inclination to take this as evidence that NetGear has finally gone over to the dark side, I'm trying to see how this could be amenable to some other interpretation. It seems that they may not have designed this product. They got it from another manufacturer to fill a gap in their product line-up. This caused them to be too quick to the market place and after the product was out they uncovered this fatal flaw that firmware can't fix.
Does anyone have any indications as to whether the WNCE3001 has this problem?